No, that is not a problem. Gentoo is about making choices and learning from your mistakes. Gentoo is not about being the most popular distro. That "entry barrier" is the first choice you make, are you going to see it through or go to an easy to install distro.

If you read it correctly , i am just stating that ( and the previous comment also ). Just saying "No", just to then say the same thing, is wrong.

Mistwolf wrote:

So what is wrong for having to do it by hand for decades? It works, takes me less than 20 minutes to get a working Gentoo install, and I can do it remotely from across the network.

I have been running Gentoo for over 10 years now, and I have only had to do 5 clean installs and 3 clone restores. The current computer I am using right now, which has had multiple hardware upgrades including cpu and motherboard, was installed back in 2007ish, and has had one clone re-install (due to a failed drive) plus several livecd/chroot boots to update the kernel/grub/drivers for the new hardware. Just because you change hardware does not mean you have to do a clean install every time.

Good for you.. So your the perfect use case for this conversation. Because if you only had 5 clean installs, the world should not have more than 5 also. Congrats!

I myself only had 2 reinstalls on my life, even on different computers. Even with changing from gentoo -> funtoo -> and back to gentoo, still no need to reinstall.
But i guess i am not the only person in the world and people have different needs or wants or itchs to scratch.

Great that a distro "for choice", one cannot even talk about an installer. Just because you or gentoo dev's mostly only install gentoo once in a lifetime.

Mistwolf wrote:

You can accomplish the same thing by using quickpkg (1) on your current system, backing it up, and then using a stage 3 install using the backup binary files to rebuild your "full desktop". Your own customized install disk.

And if you clone your hard drive, then you would boot to restore/livecd media, restore clone to hard drive, chroot to hard drive, make changes to kernel/make.conf/grub as needed, emerge -uDN @world, done.

Good ... its completly easy if you have a previous instalation you want to clone.

Its good to have a conversation where people just say "no" and then report completly diferent use cases.

Quote:

I think effort on an automated installer for Gentoo is wasted effort.

I think so too ... not talking about automatic scripts or apps that usually fail.

Talking about making the task more efficient.
I am talking about users sharing "systems" with each other. A comunity where stage3+desktop system ( or not desktop system ) could be shared in a standard way, some editions and configurations.

yagami, et al ... firstly, some of you may be speaking at cross purposes here, the subject of the thread is the need for a "graphical installer", no distinction seems to be being made between this and various other methods of "installing" ... as the discussion has morphed somewhat into the pro's/con's of various methods (a list of which might include the provision of various stage4's, which of course is not an "installer" as such). Stage4's for certain targets can be found, such as Lilblue, the Raspberry Pi stage4, and Gentoo Studio Stage4 ... so, such a thing exists, they are just not part of gentoo's procedure of making releases (and I think for good reason ... some of which I can hopefully clarify bellow).

As to a "graphical installer", well, people can mean all kinds of things by this, but mostly this is voiced from the expectations users have after having installed other distributions, and when gentoo provides them with little more than instructions they wonder why it doesn't behave similarly, and so the question gets raised ... often with little understanding of how (and more importantly, why) gentoo might differ in this regard.

Current 'autobuild' stage3's and iso's are generated fairly frequently, for multiple architectures and targets (hardened, hardened-uclibc, etc), plus there are 'experimental' releases (again, for multiple targets), release engineering ('releng') have to provide not only the resources to generate and serve this material they also have to provide some level of Q&A on their output. Yes, some of this can be automated but none the less its a task that absorbs a certain percentage of overall available human and machine resources. If an "installer" was implemented (in some form or other, be that "graphical", or additional stages bundled with the iso's) this would add an additional burden on what is an already understaffed project. For a "graphical installer" all the additional complexity (x11, GUI, etc, etc) would require its own team to have any chance of keeping up with bug reports, fixes, etc (and this is human resources that *could* effectively be used elsewhere). Similarly with various stage4's, these would all require some level of Q&A because the target is more complex, fast moving, and would be required to work for various use cases (ie, underlying hardware also "working", etc). Additionally, taking this direction would inevitably cause decisions to be made that reflect this new reality, $x would be need for such and such, and a kernel, and so on. The knock on effect would be (I hypotheses) to cause a change in focus away from what gentoo currently does: allows users to make decisions that are generally made by the distribution. The current focus, while it may not be suitable for everyone, does provide something that most other distributions don't, and this in itself is positive ... we, the users, are able to make of these various iso's, stages, tools, handbooks, etc, something that we couldn't make using pre-packaged solutions (and gentoo is the most flexible of distributions if that is what you want/need). So, really, gentoo isn't for everyone, and that is not because the barrier is set so high, or so little work is done to make it accessible, its just the outcome of certain decisions. Some of these decisions reflect the intent behind the design (guiding principles, or what-have-you) but some are just the outcome of working with a limited pool of resources that can be drawn on ... and where possible put to the most optimal use (one would hope).

Anyhow, I could probably go on but I'll cut it short as the above should be enough to give some general idea of my thoughts on the subject.

The history of Gentoo installers is a very unhappy one, and I don't think anyone has the time or
the interest to revisit it.

Will

what does Ubuntu has anything to do with it ? does Ubuntu allow to "emerge -uDN @world" ?

I see that the cry here is the same as on Arch : "Installers are for noobs, use Ubuntu". Its tiring when someone thinks installing a linux distro by console is a great acomplishment.

I dont see why not install some stable reference binary gentoo version, when after changing make.conf configurations, portage will recompile what is needed to change.

Instead of the installer, it would be great to see people doing customized stages. It would be great if we could all share instalations and ideas.

FWIW we don't choose command-line installers because it's more of an accomplishment to use them. We choose command-line installers because we don't believe that a GUI installer can be as flexible as many people (me for example) want the install to be. The handbook is a recommendation, a known-to-work formula. You don't need to follow it if you have something better in mind. If everyone had to follow the formula then there really could be a gui installer, but it's not that way. I'm generally pretty fussy about how my partition layout is, and the gui installers never seem to get it right no matter how hard you try.

Your 'reference binary distro' is the stage3 tarball. If you want it quick and dirty, use genkernel and stage3 and skip over anything you feel you don't need.

Not so much pointing at Ubuntu as what you're after, but generally speaking any binary distro. You can choose to install any package in any mainstream distro as source if you want. Ubuntu seems to be held as the Linux for non-technical people, although I don't really see that either. I use Ubuntu Server when I feel it's appropriate. I can install it on a VM in literally 5 minutes from boot to reboot, and for me it almost doesn't make sense to clone a machine based on that. If I don't care what's on the system I'll go that route out of sheer laziness.

Customized stages: I'm about ready to figure that one out myself. I have a few images that I will need which will be extremely similar, and on identical hardware. It just makes sense. Install once, zip your drive and use that as the stage4.

yagami, et al ... firstly, some of you may be speaking at cross purposes here, the subject of the thread is the need for a "graphical installer", no distinction seems to be being made between this and various other methods of "installing" ... as the discussion has morphed somewhat into the pro's/con's of various methods (a list of which might include the provision of various stage4's, which of course is not an "installer" as such). Stage4's for certain targets can be found, such as Lilblue, the Raspberry Pi stage4, and Gentoo Studio Stage4 ... so, such a thing exists, they are just not part of gentoo's procedure of making releases (and I think for good reason ... some of which I can hopefully clarify bellow).

As to a "graphical installer", well, people can mean all kinds of things by this, but mostly this is voiced from the expectations users have after having installed other distributions, and when gentoo provides them with little more than instructions they wonder why it doesn't behave similarly, and so the question gets raised ... often with little understanding of how (and more importantly, why) gentoo might differ in this regard.

Current 'autobuild' stage3's and iso's are generated fairly frequently, for multiple architectures and targets (hardened, hardened-uclibc, etc), plus there are 'experimental' releases (again, for multiple targets), release engineering ('releng') have to provide not only the resources to generate and serve this material they also have to provide some level of Q&A on their output. Yes, some of this can be automated but none the less its a task that absorbs a certain percentage of overall available human and machine resources. If an "installer" was implemented (in some form or other, be that "graphical", or additional stages bundled with the iso's) this would add an additional burden on what is an already understaffed project. For a "graphical installer" all the additional complexity (x11, GUI, etc, etc) would require its own team to have any chance of keeping up with bug reports, fixes, etc (and this is human resources that *could* effectively be used elsewhere). Similarly with various stage4's, these would all require some level of Q&A because the target is more complex, fast moving, and would be required to work for various use cases (ie, underlying hardware also "working", etc). Additionally, taking this direction would inevitably cause decisions to be made that reflect this new reality, $x would be need for such and such, and a kernel, and so on. The knock on effect would be (I hypotheses) to cause a change in focus away from what gentoo currently does: allows users to make decisions that are generally made by the distribution. The current focus, while it may not be suitable for everyone, does provide something that most other distributions don't, and this in itself is positive ... we, the users, are able to make of these various iso's, stages, tools, handbooks, etc, something that we couldn't make using pre-packaged solutions (and gentoo is the most flexible of distributions if that is what you want/need). So, really, gentoo isn't for everyone, and that is not because the barrier is set so high, or so little work is done to make it accessible, its just the outcome of certain decisions. Some of these decisions reflect the intent behind the design (guiding principles, or what-have-you) but some are just the outcome of working with a limited pool of resources that can be drawn on ... and where possible put to the most optimal use (one would hope).

Anyhow, I could probably go on but I'll cut it short as the above should be enough to give some general idea of my thoughts on the subject.

best ... khay

true, maybe this is getting cross purposes here, as i am not talking about an installer like ubuntu/fedora/opensuse.

Although i do understand your point, and i think this is what i am trying to get across ( maybe badly ), there could be some stage3's with desktop ( kde or gnome or studio like above mentioned ) . Granted, this would not really be Gentoo at its finest, but since portage is awesomelly good at picking up changes, as soon as one started customizing make.conf, portage would pick it up.

I am thinking this, because the wanting to have a working gentoo in a disk in less than 5 minutes After its there, it can take days and days compiling. But to me, having a day at "command prompt" while compiling its something that should have an alternative ( please notice, ... alternative, i am not talking about making this the only way or the default way ).

I actually dont think having a reference binary stage is any problem actually specially in gentoo, as you can customize it completly and portage detects the changes.

Now about community sharing of stage's, systems ... wouldn't this be interesting ? Something along the lines of "share your make.conf" but instead, the whole system

It would be nice to learn ( i know i picked up some ideas from sabayon when it was first released and completly based on portage ).

Something along the lines of "quickpkg for all packages, rebuild to x86 and x86_64bit.

Anyway, ok ... i see that they are not very interesting. I will stop now.

To be honest installing Gentoo is much easier than using it afterwards..... what does not mean that there is no need for GUI/NUI.....
Some 2 yrs ago, there was nice GUI installer, but someone though that continuation of development is nonsense......why? I (we) dont know.....
Without GUI it requires very high level of Linux knowledge to install/configure/run/purge FT.()

truth is: Gentoo somewhat narrows amount of users who can use it. Just as example:

Although i do understand your point, and i think this is what i am trying to get across ( maybe badly ), there could be some stage3's with desktop ( kde or gnome or studio like above mentioned ) . Granted, this would not really be Gentoo at its finest, but since portage is awesomelly good at picking up changes, as soon as one started customizing make.conf, portage would pick it up.

yagami ... these would be stage4's, but anyhow, as I pointed out all of this would need to be provided Q&A, generated on a regular basis, served, etc, etc. There would also have to be decisions made as to what form these stages would take, how much effort would be made to make sure they work for all targets (ie, for xorg-x11 some number of x11-drivers/* would need to be installed for all the potential targets, then there is more general hardware support, kernel, bootloader, init system, etc). With all of this comes the pressure to "make things work", so decisions in the form of "we should include $x because $y requires it" (as we're seeing with systemd integration to some extent) and of course it will inevitably lead to a situation in which support, Q&A, releasing, and machine/human resources, focus on the stages because these will be the go-to providers for users who expect that a gentoo install "just works" like any other "binary" distribution (with all the knock-on effects of that change of focus). Again, all of this will absorb resources, resources that (if they in fact exist) could be used elsewhere. Personally I would prefer such resources were spent in other areas, in fact, if gentoo had the additional resources to invest in build/install methods I would prefer that a 'portstrap' utility (something similar to Aboriginal Linux) were developed that would allow you to bootstrap a stage1, stage2, stage3, stage4 in cleaner manner, so without the use of portage at the initial stage (but that's probably not something that most people might want or need ... so I can but wish).

yagami wrote:

I am thinking this, because the wanting to have a working gentoo in a disk in less than 5 minutes :) After its there, it can take days and days compiling. But to me, having a day at "command prompt" while compiling its something that should have an alternative ( please notice, ... alternative, i am not talking about making this the only way or the default way ).

Yes, and everyone who also expected this would then feel that when it doesn't work they can come to the forums and say "it doesn't work ... ubuntu works ... why doesn't it work" (and little more) ... you see, there is a lot more to the problem than meets the eye, remember such a thing would need to be supported and will have knock-on effects.

yagami wrote:

I actually dont think having a reference binary stage is any problem actually specially in gentoo, as you can customize it completly and portage detects the changes.

It is a problem if you look at all the additional things that come along with this "reference" platform, each of these will have effects on the whole.

yagami wrote:

Now about community sharing of stage's, systems ... wouldn't this be interesting ? Something along the lines of "share your make.conf" but instead, the whole system :)

Its not something that interests me, but sure, and there is nothing stopping you, or anyone, making something similar to Lilblue, Pentoo, or Gentoo Studio ... I just don't think it should be something that gentoo itself should take on (for reasons I've outlined).

yagami wrote:

It would be nice to learn ( i know i picked up some ideas from sabayon when it was first released and completly based on portage ).

... but users who want such a thing can use Sabayon, the implication that as $x does this so we could/should also do this is mistaken. Sabayon wouldn't be able to do what it does if gentoo invested it resources similarly.

Without GUI it requires very high level of Linux knowledge to install/configure/run/purge FT.()

developer1 ... this depends on what metric you are using to evaluate this "level of [...] knowledge". In the early Renaissance someone could boast that they had read all the books published in their lifetime, but a collage student of today, who couldn't possibly read a similarly calculated number, would probably have been exposed to far more literature (and other media). So, "very high" is relative to whatever value is set for the mean.

developer1 wrote:

truth is: Gentoo somewhat narrows amount of users who can use it. Just as example: In Poland there is 1k Gentoo users (of +/- 32 milions of computers).

That would be true if the method of evaluation of a linux distribution was to be measured in numbers. That isn't the case, we can leave Ubuntu, Redhat, etc to play the numbers game. As I said above, gentoo isn't for everyone.

there was nice GUI installer, but someone though that continuation of development is nonsense......why? I (we) dont know.....

Well i have an idea of why.

- It wasn't as "nice" as you think, it was buggy
- It was driving silly people to gentoo, by "silly" i'm not trying to insult any users, but i'm referring to people that don't know what they are doing. And this was causing hell.
People that doesn't know what is an hdd were trying to install Gentoo. At that level of knowledge, you cannot seriously handle that distro.
Second category of people were *buntu fans, that were expecting Gentoo to offer them choice their distro doesn't grant them. And they didn't have choice they expect from Gentoo, like all generic installer you cannot provide choice but define and close choices. You cannot let them install Gentoo as they wish, the installer was aim at installing "a Gentoo". So the aim of Gentoo wasn't met by the installer simply because it's not easy to made an installer that will allow user to choose not only package like other installer but options Gentoo offer on each package. That's way more complex than "install vlc or not" option find in other installer (when they have it and not a rough "install distro").
And third were the awesome with "i don't need to read a fucking line i'm smart!" mind. That couldn't handle a gentoo as you need to read (and understand it) to handle it.

Support to those people were done of course thru forum as they weren't able to make the installer working, and "I" (to speak for myself but many others) weren't able to help them, at first because i don't use the installer, because i don't need it as i don't install gentoo or reinstall it every month.
So all users able to help on installer question were 1/ installer users (that are the ones that query help, so it mean nobody) 2/ installer devs...

You can guess the result : installer devs not providing help in forum, forum users cannot help other because they don't know what the installer is, and worst, when we were trying to help them doing the install thru installation handbook, we were facing stuff like : "what is bios?" answers.

That GUI was a nightmare put on Gentoo. Users that wouldn't be able to use portage were trying to install Gentoo, destroying their partitions and datas while using a buggy installer and a total lack of knowledge of what they were trying to do, or even most of the time, not even what was Gentoo.

As you see users with experience have 0 care or need for the installer, users with 0 experience that need the installer will still fail to use gentoo anyway, and the installer was buggy for many users. And even without bug, the installer wasn't Gentoo, just like a stage4 file isn't Gentoo, but a Gentoo. So it wasn't installing Gentoo, it was installing a Gentoo when it was working. So even user that succeed at using the installer were sad : the installer doesn't provide them what they expect, flexibility, user choice... as it was close and define set. And other were sad because they cannot manage portage or linux command.

So: users complain the installer doesn't work, forum helper complain the installer doesn't work, installer devs work was seen as a bugger more than an helper. That must be why they stop dev it.

If you want a GUI installer, ask one complete, with a support team made for it, and do not forget to ask porthole to be attach and install with it. Because you cannot install Gentoo with a mouse... to finally let your user end with a console prompt and a "what the fuck" in their mind.

Or you can ask them to use the handbook, removing users without knowledge that doesn't care but want to try just because, but keep users without that knowledge but that might ask help because they want to learn.

And today, at a less critical level, you can also see the problem with systemd.
Experience gentoo users don't have a fucking clue about systemd and use openrc, most systemd devs are not helping in the forum (except TomWij) on those questions.
So systemd users provide help to other systemd users, and you can look at number of unanswered threads with systemd to see the result...

... but users who want such a thing can use Sabayon, the implication that as $x does this so we could/should also do this is mistaken. Sabayon wouldn't be able to do what it does if gentoo invested it resources similarly.

best ... khay

Didnt actually understood this part.... I was talking about "learning a few things back then from sabayon", i meant how some tricks and tips of portage worked. Not as " we should do this that sabayon does" but more of "ahhh so this is how we configure portage to do $x or $y" or "like this is better organized" or etc. ( when i installed sabayon and saw how it had some configurations of portage or make.conf ). I think you misunderstood me there.

As for the rest, i understand about "burning resources". That is not in any way what i wanted. Something like those stage4 you mentioned was what i was thinking, and i was thinking of "community editions" exactly so that there was no "official gentoo" involvement.

Thanks for the talk, khayyam, I do understand you and i know every gentoo dev's time is precious.

Its just some things/ideas that i would love for gentoo or gentoo's community to pick up.

Without GUI it requires very high level of Linux knowledge to install/configure/run/purge FT.()

truth is: Gentoo somewhat narrows amount of users who can use it.

To add a real-life example with regards to it depends which khayyam wrote about, I personally came to Gentoo without any previous knowledge of Linux, Unix, or anything else but Commodore 64, some gaming consoles, DOS, and Windows.

Nor do I have any kind of education of sorts, aside from the self-kind.

While I did install Ubuntu at first for a look-see, I ran it for mere hours, and got bored with it. It didn't teach me anything, and I felt like being stuck (not stuck in that it didn't work, just that I didn't know what to do with it). Once I stumbled upon Gentoo (no recollection of how or why), I was hooked. Perhaps some of it was nostalgia, sort of taking me back to my first experiences with the Commodore and DOS (command-line stuff). Mostly I was having fun with it, and I was learning.

That was in 2010, and I'm still running the same installation.

With that said, I can not agree with that “it requires very high level of Linux knowledge”. People are, of course, more or less different, but it's not like I'm über-good at learning this kind of things, nor am I a wizard (or I don't know it yet). I think I believe in that if one can read the handbook, one can install Gentoo. In the process they learn to maintain it as well, and make it really their own Gentoo Linux.

That, I think, is one if not the most important aspect of the installation for a newcomer. It certainly doesn't teach everything, and while there might not be too many who can memorise things perfectly on their first go, things do leave traces in one's mind, traces which may surface to help with a problem; lead towards a solution.

That's how it was to me at least, and still is!

As such, I don't see much value in a graphical installer. I prefer the one in the mirror, and can't actually think of steps I'd want to automate. It might seem convenient when installing on several machines for example, but I think I'll have to agree with that it doesn't seem like something that Gentoo itself should be using its resources into.

Just some thoughts!_________________Kind Regards,
~ The Noob Unlimited ~

I'm realy curious what each of you considers a " gentoo installation". If we go with essential stuff, it would limit to formating drive, extracting stage 3, installing bootloader, either compiling or copying kernel and setting root's password.
In fact everything above it (including timezone) can be considered "tuning" gentoo rather than "installing" it. You can even have a scripy installing gentoo in 5 easy steps. Not like it's going to be of much help

And I atually like gentoo the way it is. Lack of graphical installer makes it easier t ounderstand what's actually going on (at least a bit) and provides some other benefits I'd rather not name aloud

... but users who want such a thing can use Sabayon, the implication that as $x does this so we could/should also do this is mistaken. Sabayon wouldn't be able to do what it does if gentoo invested it resources similarly.

Didnt actually understood this part.... I was talking about "learning a few things back then from sabayon", i meant how some tricks and tips of portage worked. Not as "we should do this that sabayon does" but more of "ahhh so this is how we configure portage to do $x or $y" or "like this is better organized" or etc. ( when i installed sabayon and saw how it had some configurations of portage or make.conf ). I think you misunderstood me there.

yagami ... well, yes, but to be honest the sentence is a little mixed up, and because of that I was focusing on the context (namely an "installer", and therefor the particular differences between gentoo and sabayon). As to what you learned, then yes, but this is knowledge you would have gained via gentoo, so I choose not to focus on the knowledge aquisition but the general differences between $x and $y. I did this because when sabayon is mentioned it is normally in the context of how much easier it is to install, and I was pointing out that without all the work done by gentoo sabayon would not be able to provide what it does. Yes, I did stray somewhat from your statement, but it was intended to be contiguious with the thread and what I was trying to express ... which of course does tie into the question of knowledge aquisition.

yagami wrote:

Thanks for the talk, khayyam, I do understand you and i know every gentoo dev's time is precious.

You're welcome ... and thank you similarly.

best ... khay

Last edited by khayyam on Mon Apr 28, 2014 7:11 pm; edited 1 time in total

there was nice GUI installer, but someone though that continuation of development is nonsense......why? I (we) dont know.....

Well i have an idea of why.

- It wasn't as "nice" as you think, it was buggy
...

This (and the rest of your post for that matter) is spot on. I tried to use the Gentoo Linux Installer on two separate occasions. It locked up both times. Not saying it couldn't've been made to work after a fashion, but it was definitely not "nice" at the time development ceased.

- John_________________I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 999 National Security Letters.

I'm realy curious what each of you considers a " gentoo installation". If we go with essential stuff, it would limit to formating drive, extracting stage 3, installing bootloader, either compiling or copying kernel and setting root's password.
In fact everything above it (including timezone) can be considered "tuning" gentoo rather than "installing" it. You can even have a scripy installing gentoo in 5 easy steps. Not like it's going to be of much help :)

I think for me, it's after the handbook says “Congratulations! You now have a working Gentoo system.” under 12. Where to go from here?

From thereon, it's the installer's (Gentoo) GNU/Linux installation, which are all different, except for when trying hard to clone one. Of course, there are many things one can do in very different ways already during the parts described in the handbook, but if the point of the question was if it needs to have a GUI and all that, then I think I'd say no.

An installation may have many different purposes, after all, and there are many different interfaces one can play with after the installation process._________________Kind Regards,
~ The Noob Unlimited ~

I've been using Gentoo without a GUI for years. The main purpose that I use it for are servers and routers. I can pop in a disc, SSH into it, and do everything from that session.

A GUI would make it more cluttered, use more resources, and would be highly unnecessary. If you want a GUI install using binary packages, look elsewhere. There are other distros out there that do that. If you're a n00b to Linux, I'd suggest learning how it works first before nose-diving into a more advanced distro.

As for installing Gentoo, I've always used my script. Works every time, except when a package decides to have a mind of its own._________________Router(Nokia IP390,2GB RAM,160GB HDD,8xGigE ports,pfSense) | MyDT(Xeon X3470@3.4GHz,32GB RAM,6x2TB R5,GTX560Ti,2xLG BD-RE,Win10Pro)
MyLT(Asus G53SX,32GB RAM,2x2TB HDDs,BD-RE,Intel 6230,Win10Pro) | Wife(PnmIIX3@3.3GHz,8GB RAM,1TB HDD,DVDRW,Win10Pro)

Talking about install disk... I have recently put my hand on a minimal gentoo install CD, and I must say I was disappointed to discover portage is not included. Well, I know gentoo is suposed to be online, but downloading 250MB iso image just to discover you have to download 166MB more before you can reboot was not what I expected from "install CD" almost 100 MB bigger than stage3 tarball.
What did I expect? Well, it had to be "get started in less than 5 minutes"-like minimal installation. Copy /mnt/livecd, kernel and initramfs from CD, install grub, reboot.

I'm a new gentoo user. I Installed gentoo using only a boot disk and the stage 3 tarball. It's a great way to start, because my internet is slow and cannot keep downloading big stuff... I use linux a few years, and I do not think gentoo is a distribution for lay (if you are wanting a graphical installer, you're probably not very familiar with linux).

Talking about install disk... I have recently put my hand on a minimal gentoo install CD, and I must say I was disappointed to discover portage is not included. Well, I know gentoo is suposed to be online, but downloading 250MB iso image just to discover you have to download 166MB more before you can reboot was not what I expected from "install CD" almost 100 MB bigger than stage3 tarball.

szatox ... but portage-latest.tar.{bz2,xz} is generated daily, releases (at least not those marked "experimental") are generated on far less frequent basis (the most recent being 2012-12-20). So, it makes no sense to bundle portage with the install disks as this will amount to an increased download size for the iso, and pulling a large section of the tree again via '--sync' (which is what portage-latest is intended to mitigate against).

szatox wrote:

What did I expect? Well, it had to be "get started in less than 5 minutes"-like minimal installation. Copy /mnt/livecd, kernel and initramfs from CD, install grub, reboot.

You could probably do this (with some privisio's) as the portage tree isn't needed for boot, and sys-apps/portage can be installed from a bin pkg. I personally wouldn't however, because its not the speed of install that matters to me but installing the target exactly as I want it. Anyhow, I'm fairly sure that I've done a slap-happy install in about 15 minutes (less as I remember as I copied the kernel from a seperate host) so it can be done in less time than a typical debian install takes.

What did I expect? Well, it had to be "get started in less than 5 minutes"-like minimal installation. Copy /mnt/livecd, kernel and initramfs from CD, install grub, reboot.

This is not going to happen. Gentoo (at least in my opinion) is not about 5-minute minimal installs. There are other distros that can do this, if you need that. Gentoo is about understanding your hardware and configuring the install to fit; and it will take more than five minutes to do this. My most recent Gentoo install involved downloading a Stage3 tarball and then following the instructions in the Handbook. No CD required.

But it could be about that for you, personally. It's called a stage 4 tarball.

Let's say you have a bunch of similar machines, as if you have a server farm for example. Or the same thing could be said for VM images.

You have one box as a builder. You install it the hard way, choose your software, your kernel options, compile it and get it running. Install the basic image you want to start from on all your systems. Tar up the filesystem, and use that as your disk image for future boxes.

Better yet, keep that system alive and updated, and any future system that is close to the same requirements repeat the tar process and simply modify it to your current needs.

if you are wanting a graphical installer, you're probably not very familiar with linux.

Let's not go down the assumption line. I know enough skilled sysadmins who do want a graphical installer, simply because it's quicker. And it is.

Sure, gentoo also works as a server OS, but people will only take that step if they really see an advantage to let their admins waste 4+ hours for an initial installation. And that is a _very_ optimistic calculation for a first time installing gentoo.

The reason we don't have it is, because no one came up with something interesting yet. Most of the devs don't care, and I don't care much either in the sense that I will not use my time to code such an installer. If any1 can come up with something that works well, people will use it. And there is no reason it wouldn't be officially supported at some point.

From my perspective that 4 hours is ridiculously optimistic even for however many I've done so far. I'll spend more than that just configuring the kernel. Back in the days of 486 and 586 things were a lot simpler, now I need to research half of everything.

Even so, I'm not all that interested in a graphical installer. In every case, I want to start with the smallest working set, and then add the stuff I want on it. I have never seen a gui installer that does that.

The simple answer here is to use Gentoo for the things you care about configuring, and use something else for the quick and dirty installs. Or, as I mentioned above, make your own stage 4.

You guys are talking about more than an installer. It's not the typing of commands that takes time, obviously. It's the compiling. So merely adapting a graphical installer wouldn't really make the process any quicker. It would just prevent you from having to type commands. I don't dig the idea, to be honest. I wouldn't really care to alter the installation process at all, myself. Definitely not with the addition of binaries.

If any1 can come up with something that works well, people will use it.

Well, previous try shown it's false.
I, like most of gentoo users, will just prefer going the handbook way for the only reason i know what i'm doing and i bet on time saved by that.
While putting my hope on even a nicely made installer i still bet at loosing time to revert something the installer has done that i don't like.

So only people not handling gentoo will use such installer.
It would be different if gentoo users need to always resintall Gentoo ; but alas for Gentoo (in that case), it's just never need.

Even so, I'm not all that interested in a graphical installer. In every case, I want to start with the smallest working set, and then add the stuff I want on it. I have never seen a gui installer that does that.

Afair, the arch linux installer can do that. Would be very cool to have a set of binpkgs people can instantly install via a gentoo gui installer.

1clue wrote:

The simple answer here is to use Gentoo for the things you care about configuring, and use something else for the quick and dirty installs. Or, as I mentioned above, make your own stage 4.

Yeah, but such an installer would definitely attract more people to gentoo, so none of us would object to it. But again: it doesn't have to be invented by a gentoo dev. Start hacking or even place bounties on this issue if you care that much.